Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 1001 posts

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#431

Post by joquarky »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #312
noirbot wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation on that last point? The amount of people I know who were the first in their family to attend college, and sometimes even graduate high school, makes me question that people are measurably less educated.

I believe it's more the critical thinking piece that's the problem. And, perhaps there has not been a decline there, but we're just witnessing an unprecedented cultural and technology-fueled abuse of an existing lack of reasoning ability (expansive reach, bot farms, algorithms, conspiracy theories, etc). I mean, any actor—including state adversaries—can essentially run military-grade psyops on our population. In a "s…

Cambridge Analytica

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#432

Post by ctrlp »

yodsanklai wrote: post #415
ctrlp wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This framing is a bit far from the actual motivating issue underlying the federal "budget" itself. I think a better question is whether having a federal workforce of 4 million people managed by an unaccountable bureaucracy is in the best interests of any country. If you frame it as simply whether to spend money on this or that or if you're getting comparable value to other countries, then it is inevitable for the sid…

> Centralized power is very susceptible to grift and corruption Does it look like we're going to less of that though? Also, just looking at the numbers, I wonder if a few percent savings in the federal budget could possibly translate to positive changes for the working class. Maybe part of the population will be happy to know they don't fund hypothetical gender studies anymore, but let's hope the cuts don't affect th…

Inevitably, there will be eggs broken to make omelettes. I will consider the realignment successful if there is a reset in the current grift industrial complex and some interregnum until new patronage networks are established and corrupted that will, in their turn, be destroyed to make room for the next generation. If you think the issue is the amount of money spent on "gender studies" you really don't understand the far greater value of what the education of our children should consist in and who gets to decide what that education will be. Those are battles worth fighting over. Penny pinching is missing the point.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#433

Post by ncallaway »

ctrlp wrote: post #387
sxyuan wrote: post #248

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread): 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least th…

This framing is a bit far from the actual motivating issue underlying the federal "budget" itself. I think a better question is whether having a federal workforce of 4 million people managed by an unaccountable bureaucracy is in the best interests of any country. If you frame it as simply whether to spend money on this or that or if you're getting comparable value to other countries, then it is inevitable for the sid…

> I think a better question is whether having a federal workforce of 4 million people managed by an unaccountable bureaucracy is in the best interests of any country

Is having a federal workforce that's managed by an unelected, and unaccountable, oligarch more in line with the best interests of any country?

> Centralized power is very susceptible to grift and corruption.

Isn't putting oligarchs with significant conflicts of interests in charge of the federal bureaucracy also susceptible to graft and corruption? Isn't halting enforcement of the law banning Americans from bribing foreign government officials also susceptible to graft and corruption? Doesn't pardoning a former governor convicted of literally selling a Senate seat make us more susceptible to graft and corruption? Doesn't the Supreme Court continually narrowing the conditions for bribery, making all but impossible to ever charge someone for accepting a bribe make us more susceptible to graft and corruption?

Honestly, it seems strange to me to say that the current administration is reducing graft and corruption, when the policies of this administration and the current conservative Court all seem to be *pro* graft and corruption.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#434

Post by skissane »

firejake308 wrote: post #298
qgin wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number 3 can’t be overstated. Healthcare costs for the exact same care are 2x-3x what they are in Europe. Global health insurance plans usually come in two flavors: 1. Global coverage 2. Global coverage excluding United States (for half the monthly premium of the first plan) The United States in an extreme outlier in terms of cost. This is separate from rationing care. This is separate from even population health (ex…

I know of at least one source arguing that in fact, population health (mainly obesity and gun violence) explain upwards of 70% of the difference in healthcare spending between the US and other developed nations.[1] To me, this seems like the most likely explanation because I believe we have pretty similar diagnostics and treatments to other developed countries, and I don't feel like a British doctor would give me any…

> I believe we have pretty similar diagnostics and treatments to other developed countries

I don't know. I remember reading an MIT PhD thesis describing how Kaiser Permanente does autism diagnosis [0] – and comparing it to my personal experience of the same topic in Australia, it seemed significantly more rigorous – e.g. specialist centres that only do autism diagnosis, using the multidisciplinary team diagnosis model instead of the single clinician diagnosis model, use of research reliable examiners for ADOS (the training and validation process required to use ADOS in research settings is much more intensive than that required to use it clinically), etc. Now, the thesis does acknowledge that Kaiser is somewhat of an outlier in this regard compared to the US average (plus it is 10 years old so now so I don't know how things have evolved since), but I still get the impression that this highly rigorous approach to autism diagnosis is much more of a thing in the US than in Australia – and if that's true of autism, maybe it is true of other conditions as well.

[0] https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/90070 – the first half of the thesis uses the pseudonym "Allied Health", but I know from other sources that "Allied"=Kaiser; the second half discusses Kaiser without any pseudonym

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#435

Post by oezi »

yadaeno wrote: post #407
mandmandam wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans cheered for the gutting of USAID because they thought that spending 25% of the federal budget was too much, and should be around 10% instead. The actual spend on foreign aid? Under 1%. Americans are systemically and catastrophically disinformed. Expecting us to be able to assess the real impact of the DOGE team's fuckups is a violation of GIGO.

I agree but condemning government budget cuts because USAID seems reactionary. I think the spirit of cutting budget is still overall popular, and is impossible to do painlessly. Also in the context of federal budget, 1% is a huge number since most of the budget (like social security, interest payments, and Medicaid) is non negotiable. ~30B a year (USAID budget) is enough to make improvements domestically, e.g free co…

I don't understand why the US is forgetting that it isn't alone in the world. Spending a little money on international aid has been exerting American soft power for decades and likely flowed back multiple times in additional trade.

Should China be left alone on the world stage to take over?

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#436

Post by michpoch »

qgin wrote: post #277
sxyuan wrote: post #248

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread): 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least th…

Number 3 can’t be overstated. Healthcare costs for the exact same care are 2x-3x what they are in Europe. Global health insurance plans usually come in two flavors: 1. Global coverage 2. Global coverage excluding United States (for half the monthly premium of the first plan) The United States in an extreme outlier in terms of cost. This is separate from rationing care. This is separate from even population health (ex…

> Healthcare costs for the exact same care are 2x-3x what they are in Europe.

And so are the salaries.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#437

Post by MisterBastahrd »

qgin wrote: post #277
sxyuan wrote: post #248

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread): 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least th…

Number 3 can’t be overstated. Healthcare costs for the exact same care are 2x-3x what they are in Europe. Global health insurance plans usually come in two flavors: 1. Global coverage 2. Global coverage excluding United States (for half the monthly premium of the first plan) The United States in an extreme outlier in terms of cost. This is separate from rationing care. This is separate from even population health (ex…

I went into the hospital for shortness of breath but my main issue was fluid accumulation. I had 3 paracenthesis procedures and was hooked up to a drip of Lasic and a catheter bag for 20 days. I didn't even recognize that I was in the ICU until I got the bill.

They charged $194,000. Insurance claims they paid $193,781. Of that, it was $7300 a day for staying in the ICU. My ambulance ride was $2500 for an 11 minute trip where one guy listened to my lungs and took my blood pressure. I had a palliative care doctor who met with me for 1.5 hours during my entire stay. She charged me $1K per hour.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#438

Post by _DeadFred_ »

sxyuan wrote: post #248

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread): 1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least th…

[flagged]

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#439

Post by cwalv »

> While the DOGE team has surely cut some number of billions of dollars, its slapdash accounting adds to a pattern of recklessness by the group, which has recently gained access to sensitive government payment systems.

Billions. I understand that it may be far from sufficient to prevent the US from entering a debt spiral if/when interest rates increase (or stagflation if/when yield curve control is enacted to prevent a debt spiral), but it's still a lot of money. No doubt mistakes have been made, but it's very unlikely that DOGE critics will be able to convince most tax papers that the pain wasn't worth it.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#440

Post by chgs »

thrance wrote: post #336
TOMDM wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need their permission to have these conversations.

Yes you do, leftist talking point are systematically downranked on X. If you don't believe me, open a new X account, navigate to the "for me" page and count the number of left-leaning tweets. The expected number is zero.

Twitter has been a cesspit of right wing drivel for years. Before that it was a cesspit of left wing smugness.
Post reply on HN